Songs That Should Be Movies

Songs That Should Be Movies

A talented artist knows how to turn a song into a story, and the best songs leave you feeling like you’ve experienced the entire narrative of a feature-length film. In fact, some songs really should be made into films, turning listeners into viewers and words into pictures. Check out our favorite songs that should be movies. Beware of the plot twists!

1. "5am in Toronto," Drake

This is one of those real-time movies, in which everything happens in the span of one hour, during the drawn-out minutes from 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. Think the TV series, 24, with a rapper protagonist.

Movie scene: Drake wakes up to a phone call, it’s Rihanna, and she’s in trouble on West King Street. Drake grabs his white fur coat, jumps in his white Lambo, and we follow him through a series of high speed car chases and run-ins with Toronto police, club-goers from University of Toronto, and a host of strangers in the night. The final scene captures Drake and Chris Brown at the base of a massive billboard where Rihanna hangs by a flimsy painter’s cable. It’s the ultimate showdown for her love. Who will prevail? You already know, it’s Drake, featuring Drake.

2. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Taylor Swift

The RomCom of the century features an all-star cast including Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal, John Mayer, Harry Styles, and, you guessed it, Taylor Swift.

Movie scene: We witness Swift’s character Tanya, a server at a diner trying to make it in the Big Top as famous circus performer, enter and exit a series of sordid relationship affairs that never seem to work out. Throughout the trials and tribulations of love and lion-taming, Tanya never loses her belief in true love. Finally, on opening night at the circus, where Tanya is set to perform for the first time, the curtain drops and she sees the face of her one true love sitting in the stands. He’s the stable boy who tends to the circus animals. He’d been pining for Tanya since the moment he saw her first walking tightrope. He is played by none other than Country Music superstar, Hunter Hayes.

3. “No Church In The Wild,” Jay-Z and Kanye West

We arrive in year 2058 and open our eyes to a post-apocalyptic world of chaos. Only two human camps have survived: Roc Nation and G.O.O.D Music.
Movie Scene: The leaders of the camps, once comrades, are now forced to compete with each other to acquire the one key to each group’s survival: the last working microphone on earth. The treasured possession rests safely atop one of the world’s relics of humanity, a famous landmark where the ultimate showdown between groups transpires at the end of the film. The two men and their posses come prepared to fight, meeting at the base of the Eiffel Tower, in Paris.

4. “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” Skrillex

Bigger than Avatar, bigger than The Hobbit, and yes, even bigger than Spring Breakers, James Cameron outdoes himself and every other it director out there ten times over with his directorial magnum opus, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
Movie Scene: Little Skrillex discovers a magical forest behind his parents’ San Francisco home at the ripe age of 7. What seems like a friendly world of magical creatures quickly becomes a dark and twisted scene filled with danger and sorcery at every turn. The film wins an Oscar in every category the year of its release, and the “Best Bass Drop in A Film,” category is created to commemorate the picture’s grandeur.

5. “Before He Cheats,” Carrie Underwood

Carrie’s friends warned her about getting involved with the bad boy cattle rancher in town, but she didn’t listen.

Movie Scene: When she finally gets word of her love’s unfaithful ways, Underwood and her college roommate, Tiffany, a pretty blonde barrel racer, devise a plan to catch him in the act. When he falls for Tiffany’s advances at a local hoedown, Carrie proves to be a vindictive vixen, sending her message loud and clear by keying his prized convertible and smashing the headlights with her trusty Louisville slugger. It’s the first of a two-part series. Watch the video for Two Black Cadillacs to get a sense for what the sequel’s about.

6. “Hellhole Ratrace,” Girls

A shoo-in for Sundance darling of the season, the independent film, Hellhole Ratrace, follows a group of twenty-somethings in Williamsburg grinding their noses to achieve greatness in each of their chosen creative fields.

Movie scene: The graphic designer, the artisanal cheese monger, the performance artist, and the aspiring model/actor/dancer/bartender spend their salad days paying dues to make it in New York, only to realize that the greatest legacy they will leave is the love they feel within their circle of close friends. Sofia Coppola directs.